ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – Winning creates a rivalry, the Boston Red Sox and Tampa Bay Rays claim, rather than years of testy relations between the teams.

That was the message coming out of the AL Championship Series Thursday, with both sides trying to play down a history of brawling that’s adding spice to the buildup.

“Bad blood?” smiling Boston slugger David Ortiz said. “There’s no bad blood. This is not the WWF. It’s a baseball game, bro.

“I mean, come on. I walk out there and they’re hugging me, and I hug them back. It’s a game. Sometimes you have things happening. It stays on the field. It’s not like you’re going to walk to the parking lot and wait for somebody,” he said.

The wait for the start of the ALCS is almost over. Game 1 in the best-of-7 series is tonight.

“I know a lot is being made of past pugilistic events. But that has nothing to do with today. Nothing,” Rays manager Joe Maddon said.

“Those were when the Devil Rays were really struggling, and the games had an entirely different tone to them. We’re a different team. We’re a different organization now.”

They’re AL East champions, to be more precise. And, looking to end wild-card Boston’s quest for a third World Series title in five years.

“We had the one incident this year. That to me also is ancient history,” Maddon said, referring to a bench-clearing brawl June 5 at Fenway Park that led to eight suspensions.

“The rivalry is being built because we’re good. That’s why. We’re in the same division and now we’re good. … It has to begin somewhere. It’s got to be this genesis where everything begins. That’s what’s happening right now. This year truly is building into a legitimate rivalry, whereas in the past I think it was more fabricated.”

The tension between the teams lingers from 2000, when Pedro Martinez plunked Gerald Williams in the first inning of a game in which the only hit the Boston ace yielded was a ninth-inning single to John Flaherty.

Williams rushed the mound and was ejected. And, there’s been trouble ever since.

Tampa Bay’s Carl Crawford was one of the players suspended in June when Boston’s Coco Crisp charged the mound after being hit with a pitch by James Shields.

Crawford likened the most recent scrap to a younger brother finally deciding to stand up to an older brother who’s always pushing him around.

Crawford noted it was not so long ago that the Red Sox were in a similar position with the New York Yankees.

“We’re a lot alike,” Crawford said. “And sometimes when you get people who are alike together and going after the same thing, they don’t get along. … It’s not personal, though, between the players. It’s what happens in baseball.”

The Rays won the season series, 10-8, including eight of nine games at Tropicana Field. The Red Sox were 7-2 at Fenway Park, where the series shifts after Red Sox ace Josh Beckett faces Scott Kazmir in Game 2 here Saturday.

Boston second baseman Dustin Pedroia said it’s not a fluke the Rays are in the ALCS.

“There were people writing them off in May. They kept plugging away and winning games and ended up winning the American League East,” Pedroia said. “They know they belong here and they’re one of the best teams in baseball.”